Upton a charter member of newly-formed congressional Homeland Security Caucus

Published 4:21 am Thursday, May 15, 2003

By Staff
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, has joined the newly-formed House of Representatives Homeland Security Caucus.
The newly-formed caucus serves as a forum for members of Congress to discuss and exchange ideas on the critically important issue of homeland security. It is entirely bipartisan and complements the efforts of the Select Committee on Homeland Security.
The 51st WMD/CST unit is stationed at Fort Custer in Battle Creek and Upton strongly supports efforts to improve the Air National Guard base in Battle Creek that can deploy the 51st WMD/CST rapidly anywhere in Michigan.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction/Civil Support Teams were established to deploy rapid assistance to a local incident commander in determining the nature and extent of an attack or incident; provide expert technical advice on Weapons of Mass Destruction response operations; and help identify and support the arrival of follow-on state and federal military response assets. Each team consists of 22 highly-skilled, full-time members of the Army and Air National Guard.
The teams are unique because of their federal-state relationship. They are federally funded, federally trained and federally evaluated, and they operate under federal doctrine.
The teams perform their mission primarily under the command and control of the governors of the states in which they are located.
They will be, first and foremost, state assets.
Operationally, they fall under the command and control of the adjutant generals of those states.
As a result, they will be available to respond to an incident as part of a state response, well before federal response assets would be called upon to provide assistance.